The Robustness and Effectiveness of the Triage System at Times of Overcrowding and the Extra Costs due to Inappropriate Use of Emergency Departments

Background Overcrowding is one of the most harmful problems for Emergency Department (ED) management and the correct estimation of time resource absorption by each type of patient plays a strategic role in dealing with overcrowding and correctly programming ED activity. Objective We aimed to investigate how overcrowding may affect urgent patients’ waiting times (i.e., the robustness of the triage patient priority system) and to evaluate the extra costs due to inappropriate use of EDs. Methods Data referring to 54,254 patients who accessed the ED of a major Italian hospital in 2011 were analyzed to study patient flows and overcrowding. To define an average per-patient cost, according to the severity of his or her health condition, the 2010 profit and loss account of the aforementioned hospital was studied and the time devoted by physicians to each type of patient was estimated by means of a self-reported survey. Results Empirical findings confirm a positive correlation between overcrowding and the time a patient has to wait before receiving treatment. This effect is relevant only for non-urgent patients who are responsible for the overcrowding itself. However, urgent patients’ waiting times do not increase in the presence of overcrowding, confirming that the triage priority system is robust against the overcrowding situation. The analysis estimates, using 2010 data, that the actual per patient cost incurred by the hospital when treating white-coded patients is, on average, 36.54 euros; a green code costs 93.17, yellow 170.62, and red 227.62. It emerges that 4 % of all the personnel costs are attributable to white color-code assistance, 67 % to green codes, 23 % to yellow codes, and the remaining 6 % to red codes. Conclusion The implementation of effective policies intended to improve both efficiency and quality in providing emergency health services has to deal with the systemic problem of inappropriate use of EDs. Policy-makers should be aware of the fact that there is a considerable portion of ED demand for assistance that is inappropriate and that oversizing EDs with respect to the true, appropriate, urgent patients’ demands, could bring about a further and undesirable rise in inappropriate assistance demands and, therefore, an increase in ED costs that are not consistent with their objectives.